I am a photographer not a terrorist!
I am really frightened. We don't even have the vocabulary to deal with this frightening erosion of our personal liberty that's happening around us and to us. Forget ID cards, this is the real thing. As of today, you can be arrested for taking a photograph of a policeman or soldier, and for those who say that the law is only there to get the bad guys, remember that six months ago we used anti terrorism legislation against
Many photographers (an exposure of photographers?) gathered outside New Scotland Yard to take pictures of as many police (or other interesting things) as possible and see what happened. Predictably, nothing except making it onto the news. And of course it's too late as it is already law, and I know it is just another facet of a ruling class out of touch with the people (I don't believe either main party is better than the other), but I'm still frightened.
I tried to think of a protest song that covers this sort of thing, but as I said, we just don't have the vocabulary. Here is what I came up with: Woody Guthrie, Your Land is My Land, The Clash - Clampdown ("We will teach our twisted speech to the young believers"), Billy Bragg - World Turned Upside Down, Bob Marley - Get up, stand up. To be a little less depressing, here's Style council's Walls Come Tumbling Down Any other suggestions? A short video clip from the event is here. A longer video here.
Labels: Erosion of Freendom, New Scotland Yard, Protest, Stupid Laws
posted by Ham at 00:19 --
Comments here: 4
Comments on "I am a photographer not a terrorist!"
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Vanessa Bates said ... (02:07) :
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essbdee said ... (09:29) :
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Graham said ... (19:50) :
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photo19 said ... (22:54) :
post a commentIts just sad that the innocence and beauty of now photography is out of control!
It's shocking... and an utterly disappointing commentary on our laws.
So, the once-popular tourist photo of the "British Bobby" is now verboten. Sad.
I'm sad that even my Father, who once was very vocal about loss of liberty, seems to have almost fallen into step with the "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear" crowd. We were talking about this kind of thing on the phone the other day (I call my folks from the US just about every Sunday), and he said something along the lines of "It's sad, but what else can we do when there's such a problem with terrorism." What there's a problem with is the loss of personal liberty as a kneejerk reaction to a few isolated incidents, especially for political purposes.
Incidentally, when we last visited England, in October, my wife was filming my daughter playing at Standalone Farm, a local attraction. Suddenly, a woman, apparently leading some kind of daycare visit, shouted out that we mustn't film the children. Rather rudely at that.
Just ridiculous - instead of working at finding the people who are actually doing something they shouldn't the theory seems to be if they stop everybody then they're bound to also stop the few who have darker motives. So stupid.